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Oconee sheriff boycotts gun dealer over gun ban to public

Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry has decided not to buy weapons for his department from a company that won’t sell self-loading and semi-automatic weapons to the public — a move that has been met with significant support, he said Friday.

Recently, Berry sent an e-mail to Dana Safety Supply in Sugar Hill telling the company that because he understood it had stopped selling self-loading rifles to the general public, he would no longer seek bids or purchase items from the business.

Emails of support have poured in to his office, according to the sheriff. “I’m well over 400 (emails). I can’t even answer them, and the phone calls from across the country,” Berry said Friday.

The sheriff’s office has purchased guns from Dana Supply in the past, he said.

“They made a decision not to sell semi-automatic rifles to law-abiding citizens, so I made a decision that we wouldn’t ever buy anything from Dana Safety Supply,” he said.

Dana “won’t go broke because I don’t spend any money there,” Berry added. “I won’t have any impact on their firearm sales. That’s not the point. The point is there is an overreaction to a national event and there’s no good reason for law-abiding citizens not to be able to buy or possess a semi-automatic rifle.”

Last month, 27 people, including 20 children in an elementary school, were gunned down in Newtown, Conn. by a lone gunman.

A company representative could not be reached Friday, but the Associated Press quoted a representative saying that “Dana Safety remains dedicated to selling firearms responsibly.”

Berry said he hasn’t seen much of a backlash from his decision. “I’ve gotten two negative emails out of the 400,” he said.

Besides emails to the sheriff, some websites that oppose gun control have signaled their support.

“Kudos to Sheriff Berry for standing up for the civilian right to bear arms,” read one comment on the Guns Save Lives website.